Slashdot Mirror
The Future of MP3 and Surround
An anonymous reader writes "Wired is running an article discussing the future of the MP3 format with the amount of competition out there, especially from the surround sound scene. Thompson, the entity that licenses the MP3 format, released the MP3 Surround format to try to combat this but will it be enough? From the article: 'It may seem as if the venerable MP3 standard is here to stay, but it faces attack from a number of angles. First, it doesn't sound as good, byte-for-byte, as files purchased from iTunes Music Store (in the AAC format) or any of the Microsoft-compliant stores. Second, the CD rippers/encoders that most people use -- iTunes and Windows Media Player -- have encouraged users to rip to AAC and WMA over the years. Third, only one major online music store, eMusic, proffers songs in the MP3 format, and it lacks most major releases. Fourth, geeks who love MP3 for its wide compatibility can now choose from preferable open-source alternatives such as Ogg Vorbis.'"
Higher number of channels. IIRC, Vorbis has a limit of 256 channels and FLAC has 8. If you need more channels, you can multiplex several Vorbis/FLAC streams in a single Ogg container file.
IMHO, one great thing about these formats is that they don't assume too much. Today's consumer level surround means 5.1 but these formats don't get stuck on it, they just give you channels without assigning them to anything particular (like front, rear, subwoofer). Therefore they can be used for future formats as well.
For a similar reason I encode everything to FLAC these days. It doesn't assume anything about psychoacoustics, which is different for each individual listener. Plus I'll probably have much better equipment and more experienced ears in the future.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.